If you are attached to this life, you are not a true spiritual practitioner. If you are attached to samsara, you do not have renunciation. If you are attached to your own self-interest, you have no bodhichitta. If there is grasping, you do not have the View.

Hi the Tibetan you quoted here is the same as in the book.The english as it appears exactly in the book is in my last post above. They use 'own purpose'.To split hairs, isn't 'own self-interest' tautology?....

If you are attached to this life, you are not a person of Dharma. If you are attached to cyclic existence, you do not have renunciation. If you are attached to your own purpose, you do not have bodhichitta. If grasping arises, you do not have the View.

རང་དོན is pronounced rang-dön but how is བདག་དོན་ pronounced? dag-dön?

And in dön - is the ö essentially the German ö or is it actually an English o sound? I ask because my German is a near native variant and when I'm back in a German speaking country it quickly reasserts itself.

MrDistracted wrote:It's not really an english 'o' sound, more like what you mentioned (although i don't speak German).I think of it like almost 'dern' in this case....providing that is you pronounce 'dern' like me

Well ö in German is a kind of cross between o and u in English but has a deeper and somewhat longer sound (or it's like a deep o and u pronounced at the same time). There is no suggestion of an r in German in that sound and I can't think of a regional German dialect that might support a r inflection.

But it's not an English o? I can think of an English o/r combined sound actually.

Also the g, as in bdag, I think of more like halfway between a 'k' and 'g', if that makes sense.

So it's somewhat chopped?

Right now I can only catch about half of what Dzongsar Khyentse says in Tibetan when he says then zhenpa zhidrel in the Seattle mp3 teachings.

Hi Namdrol and Tantular will have more knowledge of how to explain pronounciation....and indeed a better knowledge of how to pronounce.I just have vague ideas cobbled together from various places. I'm only going to confuse the issue.

Tsadra.org has a lojong text on the zhenpa zhidrel (of some 19 pages in my text editor) that seems to have been written by Sonam Tsemo (he is at least referenced in what appears to be the colophon along with praise of Padmasambhava):

However the first paragraph is the story of Sachen Kunga Nyinpo on retreat at 12 and seeing the vision of Manjushri, etc. So it looks like this could be a longer version of Drakpa Gyaltsen's lojong text.

Kirt

*that url doesn't appear to be actually valid as a static url so the content is probably dynamically generated, I did a Google search with ཞེན་པ་བཞི་བྲལ་ as the search term and the Tsadra.org link came up in the list.

The Tibetan ö is exactly like the High German one. In fact it's formed in a manner analogous to Germanic umlaut: a back vowel is transformed into the corresponding front vowel, or a front vowel moves closer to i, due to the influence of a following sound. In the case of Tibetan, these sounds are final -d, -s (which are always silent in standard Tibetan), -l (which is pronounced in some words, but not in others), & -n (pronounced normally).

As for g & k, in standard Tibetan (my name for what exiles in India/Nepal speak as a lingua franca amongst each other, not the same as Lhasa Tibetan or "Central" Tibetan), unlike English & other European languages, the main distinction isn't between voiced vs. unvoiced, but aspirated vs. unaspirated, & high vs. low tone. At the beginning of a word, ཀ་= unaspirated ​ཁ་=aspirated high tone ག་= aspirated low tone, slightly more voiced. Same with the ཅ་ཏ་པ་ series. At the end of a syllable, as in bdag, these distinctions don't matter, and as MrDistracted said it's "in between a k & g" (& in between a p & b).

'byung is future & present tense, byung past tense, so another insignificant variant. (different tenses are extremely common in different editions of the same text, because they're often homophones when someone recites it for a scribe to carve the woodblocks)

A shad doesn't have to mark the end of a sentence, it's often just the end of a phrase. In this case the "sentence" ends at མངོན་སུམ་དུ་གཟིགས་ཏེ།: "When Sachen was twelve ... he saw manifest before him." Of course the te, a lhag bcas (continuative) particle indicates that the thought is incomplete, and more's to come, so even this isn't a complete "sentence" in Tibetan. In fact the sentence is only grammatically complete at ངེས་ཤེས་ཁྱད་པར་ཅན་ཐོབ་པ་ཡིན་ནོ on line 4 "... he obtained extraordinary certitude."

To translate it as a single English sentence, showing how the phrases are linked in Tibetan:

When Lama Sakya Chenpo was 12 years old, because he had done a six month drubpa of Ārya Mañju, at one time he saw manifest before him in the center of a mass of light, on top of a jewelled throne, Lord Mañjughoṣa, orange in color, displaying the mudra of explaining the dharma, seated in bhadrāsana, surrounded by two bodhisattvas to his right and left; by investigating the meaning of what was said from the mouth of the central deity: "If you are attached to this life, you are not a practitioner of dharma, if you are attached to the three realms of existence, it is not renunciation, if you are attached to your own benefit, it is not bodhicitta, if grasping has arisen, it is not the view", he realized that all the practices of the 6 Transcendences were included in the mind training of the Zhenpa Zhidrel, and he attained an extraordinary certitude concerning all the teachings.

Clearly, just like English particle names aren't very useful for interpreting Tibetan, neither is English sentence structure. Learn to look for phrases and how they are linked, not sentences. Usually this is done with verbs + adverbial particles. This is a skill that comes with reading, not through studying grammar.

tantular wrote:Clearly, just like English particle names aren't very useful for interpreting Tibetan, neither is English sentence structure. Learn to look for phrases and how they are linked, not sentences. Usually this is done with verbs + adverbial particles. This is a skill that comes with reading, not through studying grammar.

Thank-you so much!

Are there any indications of phrase beginnings and endings or is this a matter of inducing a phrase maybe from embedded verbs or particles? Tibetan clearly doesn't use comma function symbols.

But I have to study grammar some to even figure out what I'm reading (and of course this is a very advanced text). I am beginning to work on sight reading. After prayers what texts should I work on? I was looking at Sonam and Ruth Rinchen's version of Atisha's Lamp for the Path last night and it has the Tibetan as well and thought that might be something to work through.

tantular wrote:The Tibetan ö is exactly like the High German one. ... In the case of Tibetan, these sounds are final -d, -s (which are always silent in standard Tibetan), -l (which is pronounced in some words, but not in others), & -n (pronounced normally).